


jangan kau persoalkan

by snsk



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Romance, au- wartime, basically nick and louis start an actual war over harry, one sided gryles, so canon compliant then? yep, weird af retelling of the trojan war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 21:03:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1442794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snsk/pseuds/snsk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. He starts the war entirely on accident, that's what he's been trying to explain to anyone who'll listen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	jangan kau persoalkan

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not entirely sure what time period this is set in

He starts the war entirely on accident, that's what he's been trying to explain to anyone who'll listen.

Nobody does, anyway. Least of all the one who needs to the most. Louis gets that steely look in his eyes and says something about trying to take what's his, and nice try, Harry, he won't let that happen without a fight.

Harry's about ready to scream in frustration. "Louis," he says, in a careful, measured tone, one you'd use when speaking to babies, or one slightly unhinged, "nobody is going to take me away from you. I think I'd have a say in that."

And nobody is, for god's sake. Nick was just being nice, Nick's been his friend for ages, just because Nick's all proximity and rude jokes and easy touches doesn't mean he was trying to steal Harry away in the dark of night.

Louis is overreacting.

"You're overreacting," Harry protests.

Louis places an absent-minded kiss to the top of Harry's head as he gets up from his chair and walks past him, muttering something about grains to last them through the winter if they're forced under siege.

"He was just trying to be nice," Harry says sadly to the empty council chamber.

The huge war maps on the table stare up at him old and dustily in reply.

 

"They're writing poems," Niall tells him, when they're strolling through the garden, watching the knights go through their drills. "About this war."

"But it hasn't even started." Harry worries his lower lip between his fingers. Adds hopefully, "And, you never know; maybe it won't at all, once Lou comes to his senses."

Niall ignores him, or maybe there's just nothing to say when Louis gets like this: stubborn, single-minded. Cold and sharp and precise, like the blade he calls Rogue.

Niall says, instead: "They're writing about the full, red bow of your mouth." He snorts, puts on a voice for the rest. "His heavy lidded eyes, green and changeable as the sea in a storm. The spread of his limbs, lovely in their gracelessness. His skin, pale and unmarked, just waiting to be--"

"Niall," Harry interrupts, mortified. "Is there a point to this, other than that the historians are poetic idiots?"

"No," Niall acquiesces. "Just that you're going to go down in history, the face that launched a thousand ships." He pokes at it disdainfully. "This ugly mug. Jesus. _Boys_."

 

The castle, it whispers as he passes. He knows they think he was fallible to Nick's-- charm, or something of the sort. Susceptible. Young. Foolish. They don't blame him, he doesn't think. They smile at him sort of sadly. Harry can't think of how to phrase, your king, my husband, he's just being an arse. He'll get over it. Hopefully before he leads a kingdom into war.

Savannah clears away the plates and he tries for the words; he knows she has a brother, battle-aged.

"My lord," she says. "If anyone could stop this war, it would be you."

She slips away, smiling comfortingly at him-- comfortingly! When she is fifteen and orphaned and he is supposed to look after her, look after his people.

 

Louis has another council meeting until late that night. Harry spends most of the evening in the bath, until the water runs cold but his skin smells fragrant, is wrinkled soft.

He has another bath drawn for Louis, steaming when he comes in. Louis makes a low hum of approval, turns his head to meet Harry's kiss. He drops into the bath, golden skin exposed and deceptively fragile under the flickering candlelight. He soaks, closing his eyes, and Harry waits.

Louis lifts a lazy eyelid soon enough. "I can hear you from here, Harry."

"I'm not saying anything!" Harry says defensively. He is waiting, he's waiting patiently because he wants Louis to be loose first, loose, less tense, muscles unwound and voice gone soft and fond.

"You are, love," Louis says simply, anyway. He gets up, slow and dripping, and Harry's mouth waters, will always water.

He waits till Louis has taken his second bite of chicken before asking, voice blurting it out too-fast for its cadence, "Do you really think I would've-- with him?"

He can't quite keep the note of hurt out of the question; it's been there, throughout the weeks of planning, strategizing, taking stock of the water and weapons and supplies. Did Louis really think he would, would ever--

Louis is there before he stumbles through the end of his sentence, palms warm on Harry's cheeks. Eyes bright and wonderful with something more than confidence. "No, my love," he says, and he says it with conviction. "I don't think you'd ever."

"Then why," Harry says, "just-- cut off diplomatic relations with his kingdom, I don't see why we have to--"

"Harry," Louis says. He's kneeling in front of Harry now, between his legs. You're the only one the king kneels for, he'd whispered against the inside of Harry's thigh once. How's that make you feel, Harry?

Now he just sounds worried, and apologetic. "I'm sorry, Harry, I should've-- should've told you, did you think that it was because of-- I thought you knew or you'd have asked before this. We were always going to war with Nicholas Grimshaw. He's been itching for it for ages."

Nick had been joking, though. When he'd said things like, I'd fight him for you, your highness; teasingly, in that odd tone, it'd been teasing.

Maybe.

"You know he stands to benefit most from a long drawn-out battle." Louis sounds tired. He shifts, places his cheek on Harry's knee. Harry's fingers, of their own accord, flex to tangle in his hair. "Acting like that with you-- like he could, like he had a chance, like he could just waltz in here and--" he cuts himself off. "It was the final straw."

"I didn't think Nick would, though," Harry admits, quietly. "Thought he was after peace. Though we never really discussed it. You sure he doesn't want--"

"Caught Fincham trying to sell out a maid for the maps."

There's a beat, and Harry registers the implications of this.

"You should have told me," Harry says.

"Know I should have," Louis murmurs. "I was wrong. I am worried. I'm very worried."

They wait another heartbeat. It's enough. Louis' hair is still damp under Harry's fingers, so very soft.

"It just bothers me," Harry tells him, "that I'm going to go down in history as Harry of Troy. Whose lips sunk a thousand ships. Or something."

"Don't be silly," Louis says, looking up at him, finally smiling. "We only have a hundred." He nuzzles-- not that he'd ever let anyone use that word, the king, nuzzling, the immense disgrace!-- into Harry's fingers when they stroke over his cheek. Breathes. Decides, "And Harold of Troy has a much nicer ring to it. I'll inform the historians."

 

"Your highness!" Nick greets him. "Come to run away with me to Persia? I have the ship ready and waiting."

"No, I'll have to stick around today," Harry says, "they're serving maple syrup tomorrow morning," but now he doesn't miss how Nick's eyes dart away even as he shrugs it off, smiling.

"You can still call it off," Harry says, abrupt, "Nick, c'mon. We don't have to bloody sacrifice a whole kingdom."

"Harry," Nick says. "Sit down."

Harry sits down; warily, Harry sits down. Nick watches his newly cautious movements with something shadowed in his eyes.

Louis had let Harry go because he trusted him, because Harry had begged, because Harry had said, Lou. Lou, Lou, I'll never forgive myself if I don't at least try.

There are guards stationed all around them anyway, watching warily, just in case Nick tries to kidnap Harry on a sunny Monday morning in plain sight of half his castle.

"Wine?" Nick beckons a maid over, a crook of one long finger.

"No, I'll just, I won't stay long," Harry says, shaking his head rapidly, like a dog clearing its ears of water, then feeling dumb about it. "Nick. The destruction this would cause--"

Nick sighs. "Harry," he repeats. Takes a long drag of his own cup. "There's too much that's built up now, too much for it to stop. You've know about the never-ending skirmishes, pointless murders. The people are angry, clamoring; the council has voted, and, love. Doncaster and its allies have taken too much from us for them to be assured with peace talks, now. I may not loathe your king as much as it may seem--" he pauses at that, snorts softly, "actually, I do hate him quite a fair bit, but besides the point. Our families have been fighting for centuries. There's really no other way here. We'll be overthrown if we start talking about peaceful resolution. This way, once we've pleased the masses with some bloodshed and war cry, we might actually get a shot at a truce."

"I think all of that's stupid," Harry informs him.

"Maybe," Nick allows. "Probably. But it's how it goes, what can you do?"

Harry can think of a dozen other things Nick can do, but it's a bit hypocritical, really, seeing as Louis won't give an inch, either.

He sees the inevitable coming with the force of a thunderstorm, and he shivers slightly. Rises to his feet.

"Harry," Nick says again. Like he knows there's only so many more times he's allowed to say his name, now. Nick looks tired, too; dark bruises under his eyes, movements slower and listless, so unlike that sarcastic arsehole who'd made Harry laugh in the dining hall months ago, the night that had catalyzed the war.

"Nick," Harry returns.

"I'm sorry," Nick says, his tone tinged with something like real regret, and maybe it's a lot useless, but Harry sort of appreciates the sentiment. Nick doesn't apologize.

He's a lot like Louis, actually. Too much, destructively so.

Harry wants to go back to his king now.

"'s alright, Nicholas," he tells him, and, "don't go be a hero or anything. I might miss you."

"Do not fret, your highness," Nick says. "I wouldn't dream of it."

He watches him go, gaze heavy on the back of Harry's neck.

 

It's dark when they reach the castle, but Louis is waiting for him on the steps, still sweaty from swordplay.

He looks up at Harry. "Hello," he says, and his eyes rove quickly over Harry's form like he's checking for injury or marks of Nick's affection. "I didn't come after you," he says, which means he was about two minutes from saddling Perius and galloping off into the rapidly swallowing dusk.

"Yes, I suppose so," Harry agrees, settles down beside Louis, bumps their knees together. "Think I would've noticed if someone had stabbed Nick in the stomach halfway through a sentence."

"You're such a little shit," Louis sighs.

"I learned it from you, m'lord."

It's easier than it should be, sitting out here with Louis' skin against his, even with the dark clouds gathering over their kingdom, their people.

"Louis," he says, quietly.

"Harold," Louis says.

"I want to fight."

Louis stiffens, going tense everywhere. "Harry, don't you see what an awful idea that is?"

Harry actually doesn't really mean it; he knows he'd be more harm than help in a war, would probably trip over his own sword and injure Zayn with it before the battle even began. Even so: "I don't like the idea of them all going out and fighting _in my name_ , ridiculous as that is, while I sit here and braid flower chains."

"Completely ignoring your skills on the battlefield," Louis starts, but not meanly; he quirks up the corner of his mouth in an approximation of a smile, "how pointless would the whole war be if the apparent reason for it accidentally got himself impaled on his own sword?"

"You said you were ignoring my incompetence," Harry says grumpily.

"Right, yes." Louis slides a hand over Harry's knee. "Aside from that, you're the one who's going to run this place if anything happens to me. So you've got to keep yourself safe, idiot."

Harry bites down the Nothing's going to happen to you. He knows better than to promise that. He and Louis don't lie to each other. 

"Not to mention the fact that I'd never forgive myself if you got hurt," Louis says, muffled into the crook of Harry's neck, sudden.

"What about me forgiving myself if anything happened to you?" Harry demands.

"Love, you flatter yourself," Louis returns, easy. "You got a nice smile, but not nice enough to start a war over. It's not your fault the minstrels love an epic romance. No part of this is your fault. It's the scions of two families being stubborn and not really having a choice. So you can stick that guilt back where it belongs."

"You're an idiot," Harry says. Or maybe what comes out is I love you. Louis knows anyway, it's as clear and spread out as their kingdom before them. Louis knows what Harry's saying even when the words roll out slow like wheels on gravel, even when some trip over and lodge themselves somewhere behind his trachea.

 

It's majestic, really, magnificent; how the troops are decked out in the kingdom's colours, their flags fluttering in the wind, how still they are as Louis inspects them and how silent and how ready to die for their land.

It's awful, really.

From Harry's vantage point, they look like big ants.

Zayn's presence beside him is a lingering comfort in all this nausea. His gaze is calm and focused as he watches Louis weave in and out of the ordered lines, Liam right behind him.

Louis is giving an animated, movement-heavy speech, but Harry can't quite catch it; it's muffled lilts of Louis' tone, the roar of the answering army. He isn't sure he wants to hear it, anyway.

Zayn's probably the only one who thinks this war is as stupid as Harry does. He's also got people he loves out there: Liam a steady presence at Louis' back, and if he follows Zayn's eyes, he can see the sharp cut of Jawaad's profile off to the side. 

Zayn's the one stroking Harry's back as he shudders and presses into him. 

 

Harry and Louis have known each other since they were sixteen and eighteen and Harry's mother decided it was high time he started getting involved in official duties instead of continuing his incredibly useful job of playing with Dusty and helping out in the kitchens. Even if Gemma was inheriting the throne, Harry had to be ready to take over, Harry's mother reasoned on the way to the Tomlinson kingdom. 

Harry's mother wasn't expecting Harry to fall immediately and irreversibly in love with the heir to Doncaster. 

It was just that Louis had been so bright-eyed and sweet and sharp and loud, and he was a prince but he was just a boy, a boy who tugged on Harry's hair and pinched him in the side while their mothers discussed important kingdomy things at the table, a boy who had soft-falling hair and never-still fingers and who looked at Harry like-- like.

Harry begged to stay for the rest of summer. Harry's mother relented. He also stayed throughout that autumn. Dusty was brought in, yowling, on a shivery winter's night and scratched Harry thoroughly up once he was released from his cage.

He rubbed his head on Louis' leg, though, purring for Louis to pick him up and cuddle him. So he'd changed loyalties. So Harry hadn't been surprised.

Thing was, Louis had been promised to Eleanor Calder already, and when he announced to his family that it was Harry he wanted to be betrothed to, it has caused a-- well, a whole big thing. Doncaster had narrowly avoided war with Manchester. Diplomatic talks had gone on for months. Security was tightened in case one of the Calders decided to go rogue and take revenge.

"It's worth it," Louis muttered into Harry's ear. "You're worth it. We're worth it."

Harry had thought that that was their epic romance, the story about the two idiotic princes that'd live on even after their bones had withered. It had barely, he reflected now, in Zayn's comforting arms while the army below them readied themselves to kill or be killed, been the prequel.

 

"You can take his ugly mug," Niall was saying comfortingly to Louis, too-loud for the early morning. Louis was too-far for the early morning; Harry couldn't feel him draped like a starfish beside him, one hand slung across Harry's stomach.

Harry squinted his eyes but didn't open them. Louis was on the windowsill with Niall, eating breakfast. Or-- or lunch, because the morning didn't seem as early as it had originally. In fact, the bright warm rays slanted across the bed seemed to indicated midday. As Harry watched, Louis shushed Niall absently, waving over at the bed with his ham.

"I know, c'mon. I'm not afraid of single combat. I'm afraid for my men, I'm afraid that this is going to drag on for decades and be left to my poor unassuming heir, I'm afraid that my mother or sisters or you or Zayn or Li or him--" more ham-waving, "will come to harm, but hell will freeze over before I'm afraid of Nicholas Grimshaw's attempt at swordplay. Fuck. I wish he'd challenge me."

"Y'know he's too smart for that."

Louis snorts. "He wasn't smart enough to not make a move on Harry, was he? In front of half my court, nonetheless. It was an extremely unsubtle attempt at telling me he's tired of waiting."

Niall hums. "He's got what he wanted, anyway."

"Manchester's decided they're for him." Louis huffs a tired laugh. "Never expected anything less, not after Eleanor."

"Yeah. Man. Harry's arse must really be--"

Harry resists the urge to wrestle Niall into a messy stranglehold, but Louis does it for him, like he's listening.

"You shut that Irish gob," Louis says easily, "I've started wars over Harry's arse, remember?"

"Too right, son," Niall chokes out, jabbing his fingers into Louis' sides. "Crazy motherfucker you are."

 

Johannah and Louis' sisters are far away, under the Deakin protection. Queen Anne can look after her own kingdom, Gemma by her side. Harry's grateful for this. He'd like his mum, though. He'd like his mum a lot. But she's got a kingdom to run, and Harry's got a war to start.

She sends dozens of lean bronzed deadly men to assist Doncaster. Harry spends the morning greeting them; he remembers them from his childhood, they're not much different in age. 

"Harry, Harry, Harry," Ser Winston mock-sighs, shaking his head. "The number of times I told you those curls would get you into trouble. And now look at us all. Stuck in rainy as all fuck Doncaster. The damp is getting into my bones. How can you stand it?"

Harry sticks his tongue out at him. "Shut it, Ben," he huffs. "Where's Fel?"

"Over with Ser Liam," Ben says, making a shooing motion with his brush. 

 

The five of them camp out in the woods, a sort of tradition for them before Big Things happen: Louis' coronation, Liam's appointment as the head of Doncaster's royal army, Zayn's official engagement, Harry and Louis' wedding. Just them and s'mores and one badly-put-up tent and another perfectly-installed one and a crackling fire and low murmurs over the flames.

That'll come later; now there's cool lakewater and Louis is holding Liam under. Zayn's sighing and wading over to save his army chief in distress. Niall's not making it any easier by ducking low and pretending to be vaguely terrifying water creatures grabbing at everyone's legs. Harry's been told that there's a way to catch fish with your bare hands. 

Once Zayn's successfully assisted Liam in getting his revenge on a spluttering Louis, they turn to watch Harry.

"Why do you like you're being possessed," Louis asks. Niall can't even talk, he's doubled up in laughter, splashing at the water's surface.

"Harry, mate, you alright?" Zayn asks, sounding a bit concerned.

Harry aborts his expertly rapid fish-catching to glare at them. "I'm catching our dinner."

"Na, mate, the only thing you're catching there, chest-deep in cold water, moving nothing but your arms in the last twenty minutes, is a cold."

"I give up," Harry informs them. "I can't do this. It's impossible. Ben was lying. Ben lied to me. Ben's a big fat--"

Liam reemerges from the water, wriggling fat tuna in hand.

Niall's laughter turns choking and breathless.

"You'll get 'er next time, Styles," Louis says, very earnestly and encouragingly, and Zayn nods, mouth firmly closed. Liam chases Harry onto land with the wriggling fish.

It's a good day.

 

Louis' speech starts off like: "You know you all aren't fighting for the virtue of old Harold over here."

Harry flashes him the bird; Louis grins. Turns back to his troops. 

He's all business now. He's a king. More than that: he's a soldier. 

"But you are fighting for Doncaster. You are fighting for your peace. You are fighting for your land. You're fighting so that your kids can play in the edges of the forest and not have to worry about getting stabbed. You're fighting so you don't have to bring daggers to the market and sleep with one eye open. You're fighting for the right to fucking roam around this kingdom, our kingdom, without the constant threat of ambush from the cowards over in the east. It's time to teach them a lesson, don't you think?"

Louis waits for the erupting cheer before he canters up to Harry on Perius and leans. Harry reaches up on his tiptoes to turn his face to Louis. It's nice, this change. It's good, looking up to his king.

"I, however," Louis murmurs against his ear, "will be fighting for you. Not in your name. But for you."

He doesn't kiss Harry, just runs his fingers through Harry's hair, again and again. Harry wraps his arms around Louis' waist, clings on desperately, hides his rapidly betraying eyes until they start listening to him again. Louis cups his face in two hands and stares at him, long and fond, memorizing, he'd said, once. How come you can do it, Harry'd asked, and when I do you call it creepy? 

It's cause you look like a frog trying to take a particularly difficult shit, Louis had sighed.

"Well. Catch you later, Haz," he says abruptly, turning away like he doesn't care, which Harry has learnt enough to interpret as him caring more than he can take.

"See ya 'round, Lewis," Harry calls out, which gets him a quick, fleeting grin and a middle finger before Louis turns to face the front again like he can't bear to look back.

 

Then comes the waiting, which. Is pretty much the worst part.

Harry tries to cope, he really does. He wakes up early and goes through familiar drills and has fruit for breakfast and then, y'know, runs a kingdom, then has Niall and Zayn over and writes to his sister and mother and Louis' family and Liam and Louis, and he curls up in the huge royal bed and inhales the dearly-beloved rapidly-disappearing scent until he falls asleep.

He's coping. Louis knew he could; Louis knew he would. It's early days; according to Louis' letters, both sides are doing a lot of watching and waiting, hanging about and planning their next moves.

Or they're all just cowards, Louis writes cheerfully. In any case no one's a bag of bones yet, so there's that.

 

It really starts off on a Friday, courtesy of Louis, of course, who as soon as he's decided there's action to be done has a one-track mind. He's never been one for waiting.

The news reaches Harry three hours later, via messenger; they've attacked via the south, they've lost a couple of men, drew first blood.

It just escalates from there.

 

"I don't know which is more awful," Niall says. "That I'd die to go and get myself killed, or that there's a piece of me that's really fucking relieved I'm no out there."

"None of that's awful," Harry tells him. "It is what it is, y'know?" 

He thinks about tracing the letters on Louis' chest with his tongue. 

"And it's not like you're sitting on your arse here. You're helping me, you're helping the people. I'd probably crawl up in a ball and cry all day if it weren't for you and Zayn."

"Y'know, I wouldna ever thought it," Niall comments, 

"--thanks for that, Ni," Harry says preemptively.

"You're very welcome, as I was saying, I wouldn't of ever thought, but you make a pretty good king consort."

Niall pats him affectionally. Gets Zayn's stomach instead. Zayn grunts, still asleep. They've taken to huddling in one pile like puppies, all three of them.

The nights get kind of cold. You didn't notice it when Louis was around.

 

_Lo Princess! Heard you're doing a damn finer job of running Tomlinson's lands than Finchy is running mine. Yeah, I know you're intercepting this, Fincham. He's trying to prevent me from accidentally starting a world war, you see. Listen, Finchy, if I wanted to really start shit I'd make away with him in the dead of night._

_In the interests of this ever reaching your eyes, princess, I was merely kidding._

_This is as boring as I thought it'd be. Me and your boy want to avoid all-out bloodshed so we're just acting out little skirmishes about the place. It won't be enough to satisfy those who really want to get it going on, soon enough. They'll go behind our backs and we'll be forced into it. For a king, princess, I don't really have much say at all._

 

_Princess--  
This is the most half-hearted war in the history of existence. I'm bored as fuck. There's a lot of waiting about in tents on muddy days, waiting about in tents on hot dry days, waiting about in tents at night when the mosquitoes come biting, and not even your pert little arse is reason enough for this._

_I can hear Finchy grinding his teeth from here._

_Can somebody do something already? Waiting about in tents is making my back hurt. I miss my own bed. I miss Puppy. I miss hair product. I even miss banal talk about watermilling and the price of oats._

 

_Harriet...,_

_The worst thing, I think-- worse than hearing news of your men's deaths, is having to write those goddamn letters to their families. You feel so bloody guilty, like it should've been you. At the same time I don't actually know if I would take an arrow for a random man. Do I know anything? My father would've known._

_Do you see how morbid I'm getting. It's the hanging about in the tents._

_Miss autumn in Cheshire._

 

_Princess when I SAID I wanted something to happen I didn't mean ALMOST GETTING KILLED BY POISONED GLASS_

 

_Harry things are shittin up for real here somebody put glass in Grimshaw's fuckin tea????? I swear it wasn't one of us at least I don't THINK it was but whoever did it it's proper war now and you know!!!! All the things I don't have time to write to you right now-- plans to draw up, battle faces to put on, all that-- but you know. You know everything already. Take care of my mum I love you xx Lou_

 

_Priiiincess no i don't think it was Tomlinson, but it's too late for that now. Whatever happens tomorrow, I was always rather fond of you._

 

The waiting on the last day feels like the waiting for the past two years. Plus a century or so.

 

Louis comes back on the seven hundred and thirty-first day. The men are huddled and tired around him, no longer the precisely ordered troops from two years ago. Liam's on his right, as usual; Zayn lets out a breath probably not even Zayn knew he'd been holding. They trot closer and closer, and as the men start to dismount, stagger to the grass, look around for their loved ones, Louis and Harry keep staring.

Niall breaks the spell.

"Tom _mo_ ," he shrieks. "Payno!!!"

And then Harry's running too, and Louis' thinner, he realizes absently, whipcord muscle-thinner with messy uncut hair and an exhausted set to his mouth and a scar down his cheek that nobody told him the fuck about, and Louis is catching him up in in proper war-returned manner, lips and tongue and teeth and--

Harry's been home, all this time, but he hasn't really, and this is. This is.

They kiss until Harry feels dampness on his skin, but he isn't crying, surely? unless he hadn't noticed, but he thumbs at the sides of Louis' eyes and realises it's Louis' tears on his cheeks. Louis who's crying quietly into the kiss and Harry pulls back slightly, keeps his eyes fixed on Louis, can't do anything but say, "I love you. I do. My king."

Louis gasps out a wet-sounding, "I love you, I love you," into Harry's jaw. His voice breaks once, twice. "I'm sorry it's taken so long. I'm sorry I had to start a war."

"It's alright," Harry says. He wraps his arms around Louis' neck and holds on tight. Louis snuffles into his shoulder. Louis is warm and living and here and his. 

"It's alright," Harry repeats. "I've heard my bum was totally worth the thousand ships."

 

They totally mess it up in the retellings.

Harry is immortalized as the boy-- boy! He doesn't even get 'man'-- who started an epic, age-old war. Louis gets the role of jealous lover, battle-fevered king. He's not too upset about it. He makes sure the stories include lots of pointed remarks about the skill and sharpness of his sword. A metaphor for his dick, he constantly reminds Harry.

The scribes do acknowledge that the war had been building up for centuries. But of course they focus on the romance. Everybody likes the tale of a tragic love triangle. 

Harry... finds that he could care less. The people who matter will know the truth. The rest of the generations to come can read all about it and assume they know the truth. For now he's got Louis, kicking the ball over to an unsuspecting Niall, laughing a manic shrieking sound as it bounces off Niall's ear and into the net.

"We hadn't even started," Liam huffs.

"I blew the whistle," Louis insists.

"No you didn't."

"Just cause you didn't hear it--" 

"Is that how you won the entire fuckin' war," Zayn asks. 

Louis kicks out at him. "Referees are s'posed to be impartial!"

"Referees are supposed to blow the whistles."

"I'm already at a disadvantage. Look who's on my team." 

"I've gotten better," Harry says sadly.

"He actually has. We can swap," Liam offers.

Louis pushes out his lower lip. "No can do. Shut up. Let's play."

"Watch your back, Li, he'll be calling the troops in any minute now," Niall warns.

"Oh, haha, that's not going to get old real fast."

Zayn blows the whistle, a short sharp blast, Harry fumbles a pass to Louis, and somewhere in the middle of the game Louis grabs on to Harry's hand, and Harry just-- doesn't let go, and they play like that until Liam's scored his three thousandth goal (Zayn's stopped counting after 25-0) because apparently holding hands makes for some ridiculously difficult football.

Who knew.

(((((((((((http://t.co/nn8Yns0ssY)))))))))))))

Harry meets Nick the summer after he returns from Doncaster for the first time. Nick's there accompanying his father, who seems to have had the same idea as Harry's mother about their children loitering about in castle kitchens and not learning anything about what they were born to do.

"Except in my case it was manservants' bedrooms," Nick says to Harry, when they've sneaked out of a particularly draggy meeting about the exact size and precise shape of the windmills.

Harry looks at his face for signs of just kidding haha. There aren't any.

"Oh," he says, relieved. "Me too. Except I haven't been caught. Cos I haven't been in any."

Nick smiles. "Really?" he says. "Regular charmer like you," and he reaches over, places his big, warm hand on Harry's knee.

Harry bites his lip. "I've kind of," he says. "D'you know Prince Louis? From Doncaster? I spent the winter there."

"I knew it!" Nick announces, punching the air. "Knew he was one. Knew he was fuckin' gagging for--" he catches Harry frowning at him. "Hey." 

He bumps his shoulder into Harry's. "That's just me, I swear. I'm a crude arse most of the time. You'll learn to ignore it. But--" he finally withdraws the hand on Harry's leg. "--so. So it's like that, huh?"

Harry grins, wide and happy, remembering the shape of Louis' mouth, the secrets whispered, embedded into Harry's skin, the legs tangled together under the dinner table, how Louis' eyes scuffed their way into something softer when Harry came into the room. Louis.

"Yeah," he says, still smiling sort of maniacally-- "You look like a turnt frog," Nick commented-- "Yeah, Grimmy, it's like that."

xx

 _sayangku jangankan kau persoalkan siapa dihatiku/ terukir di bintang tak mungkin hilang cintaku padamu_ \--yuna, terukir di bintang

which roughly translates to: 

my love don't you ever question who is in my heart/ it's written in the stars, forever

**Author's Note:**

> ive taken great liberties with the trojan war
> 
> this was longer than i expected it'd be. 2 thanks: 1 to my sister ("child. hey child. what d'you call that thingy with the people in the horse?"). 2) nick grimshaw, whose constant references to harry styles on his show reminded me every so often that this fic is non fic...tion
> 
> I am @bisexualstiles on twitter and my writing tumblr is tomlinsexloual !


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